Background The current coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is holding the world in its grip. Epidemiologists have shown that the mortality risks are higher when the health care system is subjected to pressure from COVID-19. It is therefore of great importance to maintain the health of health care providers and prevent contamination. An important group who will be required to treat patients with COVID-19 are health care providers during semiacute surgery. There are concerns that laparoscopic surgery increases the risk of contamination more than open surgery; therefore, balancing the safety of health care providers with the benefit of laparoscopic surgery for the patient is vital. Objective We aimed to provide an overview of potential contamination routes and possible risks for health care providers; we also aimed to propose research questions based on current literature and expert opinions about performing laparoscopic surgery on patients with COVID-19. Methods We performed a scoping review, adding five additional questions concerning possible contaminating routes. A systematic search was performed on the PubMed, CINAHL, and Embase databases, adding results from gray literature as well. The search not only included COVID-19 but was extended to virus contamination in general. We excluded society and professional association statements about COVID-19 if they did not add new insights to the available literature. Results The initial search provided 2007 records, after which 267 full-text papers were considered. Finally, we used 84 papers, of which 14 discussed severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Eight papers discussed the added value of performing intubation in a low-pressure operating room, mainly based on the SARS outbreak experience in 2003. Thirteen papers elaborated on the risks of intubation for health care providers and SARS-CoV-2, and 19 papers discussed this situation with other viruses. They conclude that there is significant evidence that intubation and extubation is a high-risk aerosol-producing procedure. No papers were found on the risk of SARS-CoV-2 and surgical smoke, although 25 papers did provide conflicting evidence on the infection risk of human papillomavirus, hepatitis B, polio, and rabies. No papers were found discussing tissue extraction or the deflation risk of the pneumoperitoneum after laparoscopic surgery. Conclusions There seems to be consensus in the literature that intubation and extubation are high-risk procedures for health care providers and that maximum protective equipment is needed. On the other hand, minimal evidence is available of the actual risk of contamination of health care providers during laparoscopy itself, nor of operating room pressure, surgical smoke, tissue extraction, or CO2 deflation. However, new studies are being published daily from current experiences, and society statements are continuously updated. There seems to be no reason to abandon laparoscopic surgery in favor of open surgery. However, the risks should not be underestimated, surgery should be performed on patients with COVID-19 only when necessary, and health care providers should use logic and common sense to protect themselves and others by performing surgery in a safe and protected environment.
Human detection is an integral component of civilian and military rescue operations, military surveillance and combat operations. Human detection can be achieved through monitoring of vital signs. In this article, a mathematical model of human breathing reflected signal received in PN-UWB radar is proposed. Unlike earlier published works, both chest and abdomen movements are considered for modeling the radar return signal along with the contributions of fundamental breathing frequency and its harmonics. Analyses of recorded reflected signals from three subjects in different postures and at different ranges from the radar indicate that ratios of the amplitudes of the harmonics contain information about posture and posture change.
Besides inmate monitoring and suicide attempt detection, this paper can be extended to other radar applications such as home-based monitoring of elderly people, apnea detection, and home occupancy detection.
Radar-based noncontact sensing of life sign signals is often used in safety and rescue missions during disasters such as earthquakes and avalanches and for home care applications. The radar returns obtained from a human target contain the breathing frequency along with its strong higher harmonics depending on the target’s posture. As a consequence, well understood, computationally efficient, and the most popular traditional FFT-based estimators that rely only on the strongest peak for estimates of breathing rates may be inaccurate. The paper proposes a solution for correcting the estimation errors of such single peak-based algorithms. The proposed method is based on using harmonically related comb filters over a set of all possible breathing frequencies. The method is tested on three subjects for different postures, for different distances between the radar and the subject, and for two different radar platforms: PN-UWB and phase modulated-CW (PM-CW) radars. Simplified algorithms more suitable for real-time implementation have also been proposed and compared using accuracy and computational complexity. The proposed breathing rate estimation algorithms provide a reduction of about 81% and 80% in the mean absolute error of breathing rates in comparison to the traditional FFT-based methods using strongest peak detection, for PN-UWB and PM-CW radars, respectively.
In contemporary wireless communication systems, the multiple-input and multiple-output systems are extensively utilized due to their enhanced spectral efficiency and diversity. Densely packed antenna arrays play an important role in such systems to enhance their spatial diversity, array gain, and beam scanning capabilities. In this article, a slotted meta-material decoupling slab (S-MTM-DS) with dual reflexes slotted E-shapes and an inductive stub is proposed. Its function was validated when located between two microstrip patch antenna elements to reduce the inter-element spacing, the mutual coupling, the return losses, and manufacturing costs due to size reduction. A prototype is simply fabricated in a volume of 67.41 × 33.49 × 1.6 mm3 and frequency-span measured from 8.4:11 GHz. At 9.4 GHz frequency, the spaces between the transmitting elements are decreased to 0.57 of the free space wavelength. When the proposed isolation S-MTM-DS is applied, the average isolation among them is measured to be −36 dB, the operational bandwidth is enhanced to be 1.512 GHz, the fractional bandwidth improved to be 16.04%, and the return losses are decreased to be −26.5 dB at 9.4 GHz center frequency. Consequently, the proposed design has the potential to be implemented simply in wireless contemporary communication schemes.
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